rhaps say he does like it. Here we are now.
Inside this low gate you are within the demesne, and I may bid you welcome
to Kilgobbin. We shall build a lodge here one of these days. There's a good
stretch, however, yet to the castle. We call it two miles, and it's not far
short of it.'

'What a glorious morning. There is an ecstasy in scenting these nice fresh
woods in the clear sunrise, and seeing those modest daffodils make their
morning toilet.'

'That's a fancy of Kate's. There is a border of such wild flowers all the
way to the house.'

'And those rills of clear water that flank the road, are they of her
designing?'

'That they are. There was a cutting made for a railroad line about four
miles from this, and they came upon a sort of pudding-stone formation, made
up chiefly of white pebbles. Kate heard of it, purchased the whole mass,
and had these channels paved with them from the gate to the castle, and
that's the reason this water has its crystal clearness.'

'She's worthy of Shakespeare's sweet epithet, the "daintiest Kate in
Christendom." Here's her health!' and he stooped down, and filling his palm
with the running water, drank it off.

'I see it's not yet five o'clock. We'll steal quietly off to bed, and have
three or four hours sleep before we show ourselves.'

CHAPTER XIII

A SICK-ROOM

Cecil Walpole occupied the state-room and the state-bed at Kilgobbin
Castle; but the pain of a very serious wound had left him very little
faculty to know what honour was rendered him, or of what watchful
solicitude he was the object. The fever brought on by his wound had
obliterated in his mind all memory of where he was; and it was only
now--that is, on the same morning that the young men had arrived at the
castle--that he was able to converse without much difficulty, and enjoy
the companionship of Lockwood, who had come over to see him and scarcely
quitted his bedside since the disaster.

It seems going on all right,' said Lockwood, as he lifted the iced cloths
to look at the smashed limb, which lay swollen and livid on a pillow
outside the clothes.

'It's not pretty to look at, Harry; but the doctor says "we shall save
it"--his phrase for not cutting it off.'

'They've taken up two fellows on suspicion, and I believe they were of the
party here that night.'

'I don't much care about that. It was a fair fight, and I suspect I did
not get the worst of it. What really does grieve me is to think how
i